


Rituals

by doomed_spectacles



Series: Spooky Omens: 13 Days of Halloween! [12]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27305296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomed_spectacles/pseuds/doomed_spectacles
Summary: Every human society is bound together by the performance of rituals. After living among them for six thousand years, is it any surprise that Aziraphale and Crowley have developed a few of their own?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Spooky Omens: 13 Days of Halloween! [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978405
Comments: 11
Kudos: 50
Collections: Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween





	Rituals

**Author's Note:**

> Racket's 13 days of Halloween,day 13: Ritual
> 
> NOTE: The descriptions of the types of rituals below were written by me after a minor amount of reading. Please do not consider them authoritative or highly researched!
> 
> Day 13! We made it! Thank you thank you thank you to Racketghost and the lovely spooky folks on discord for being so much fun! It was such a blast to share spooky silly stories with you all. I wrote more this month than I have in a great long while to have something for each prompt and I'm really glad I did.

_Rituals are found in every human society. When humans gather in groups and trust and love one another, the performance of rituals binds them together._

* * *

_Ritual of reenactment_   
_An event or action that allows a community to re-imagine or re-experience their origin or foundational myth._

It’s not that he doesn’t realize what he’s doing. Guarding knowledge like a dragon guards treasure, walled off from the rest of the world. He stands watch at the eastern end of his domain. He knows. Aziraphale cultivates his little world and happily waits while the world turns around him.

Crowley scoffs at the idea, so Aziraphale likes to bring it up. He likes to see Crowley scoff, especially when he’s been drinking the good stuff at the bottom of the bookshop cellar. His eyes are uncovered by then, and sometimes he loses control over the white parts of one or both of them, which makes his snake eyes look rather more striking than Aziraphale likes to admit.

“Your plants and your momentos and your slithery-changey nature, though,” he says, swaying while trying to focus on Crowley’s right eye, which is currently the more yellow one. Crowley is swaying too, which makes things difficult.

“Slithery-changey? You’re drunk, angel.”

“Well yes, but that’s not here and it’s not there. It’s neither there nor- it’s not the point.”

“Wot’s the point, then?”

Crowley smiles and he’s lost the point but he’ll find it later. It might be a decade or so but he’ll find it again. Aziraphale looks at Crowley’s eyes, trying unsuccessfully to adapt to the world around him, and he knows what they’re doing, the two of them. He sits in his little Eden and stands guard while his serpent causes chaos within its walls. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

* * *

_Ritual of affliction_   
_An action or series of actions repeated in a pattern and designed to mitigate the anxiety caused by living in a dangerous world full of unknown forces._

He must’ve started doing it after the Arrangement, Aziraphale thinks.

In the very early days, they’d often had their wings out when they met. Doing anything other than facing each other to talk would’ve been impractical. In those early chaotic, nomadic days, their presence had been obvious. Aziraphale had never been adept at blending in, fitting within a group, any group, even his own. But back then he’d never seen the need. Angels were an accepted fact of life, as were demons. Crawly had never circled Aziraphale looking this way and that, sniffing the air.

He hadn’t done it in Rome. Then again, they’d been drunk most of the time in Rome. Until water filtration was de rigueur, he and Crowley had been as drunk as the human population — a low buzz that settled around the ears. They brushed it aside when they needed to, like shooing away a fly. But no, they’d fallen all over each other and wandered the streets of the empire debating philosophy and laughing about astronomy on flimsy sandals, and Crowley had walked next to him the whole way.

The Arrangement, then. That’s when it started.

Crowley's circling had unnerved him at first. It put him on edge to see Crowley on edge. After a thousand years or so, after hundreds of blessings and temptations and everything in between, he got used to it. Crowley circled him at least once when they met, several if he was agitated.

After the world didn't end, they met for lunch. It was a new thing, meeting for lunch when they didn’t have to pretend it was _for_ something. The lack of pretense added a shiny layer of excitement to an otherwise ordinary lunch date.

He kept doing it.

Crowley ambles up the path to their agreed meeting place in the park, taking his time and swinging his hips. He nods to Aziraphale coolly as he always does, and as always his coolness is undone by the obvious happy twitch of his lips. Crowley completes one full circle around Aziraphale, head swiveling, before he settles at the railing and says, “Quite a day for a parade.”

(It’s not — London has decided to disregard the customary sunshine and pleasantness of spring in favor of a bracing fog and general gloom.)

“You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Walk around me in a circle like a mother wolf protecting her cubs.”

Crowley makes several noises but each is further from being a word than the last.

“Really, my dear, you've been doing it for a millennia but there's no need now.”

“I don't know what you- I'm not- you're-”

Aziraphale carefully lays his hand on the railing next to Crowley’s. Their fingers don’t touch but they’re close. “Heaven and Hell haven't so much as popped their heads out to say hello. They're not coming after us, Crowley, so you can stop prowling.”

“Prowling?”

“Yes, prowling,” he says. “Did you think I hadn't noticed?”

“Who, well, who says it's- what if I'm not-”

“I see you, Crowley. You circle me like you're expecting a wild animal to jump out of the bushes. You’ve been doing it since the- you know- the _Arrangement_.” He whispers the word out of habit, then feels silly.

Crowley stares at him for several moments, working his jaw. Finally, he settles. Aziraphale sees Crowley considering responses and waits for what eventually comes out.

“Maybe I'm just getting a better view of your behind,” Crowley says with a smirk.

Aziraphale's eyebrows lift of their own accord. London’s crowds stream by them and the moment gains a sort of giddiness. Aziraphale smothers his own smile out of habit, then lets a smaller version of it out to play. He says, “I know that’s not the truth, though you are an incorrigible flirt.”

Now it’s Crowley’s eyebrows that lift.

“If you’ll recall I spent much of the early modern period in monk’s robes and yet you still stalked around me like a planet orbiting the sun. Robes or trousers notwithstanding.”

Crowley sticks his tongue in the hollow of his cheek. He knows he’s been caught out and he’s enjoying it. He doesn’t respond, though. They stand, side by side, while the day passes.

“Well, shall we?” Aziraphale half turns, conscious suddenly of the lunch they’re not having. He almost doesn’t hear it — Crowley’s facing away.

“Just have to keep you safe.”

Aziraphale smiles. As they walk to lunch, his hand brushes Crowley’s and neither moves away.

* * *

_Ritual of passage / transformation_   
_A celebration or acknowledgment of an individual passing from one state or stage of life to another._

He doesn't realize it until much, much later. Aziraphale doesn't give much thought to his time in Hell. Time marches forward, for humans and angels and demons. As it passes, the future he builds in a cottage with Crowley seems far more important than a sham trial and ten minutes in a bath.

An invitation comes in the post, addressed to 'you two'. Crowley is working in the garden, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow with a smear of dirt on his cheek. Aziraphale loves him.

“There's a letter here,” he says, bringing it to the front of the stack, “from Adam Young.”

“Oh?”

Aziraphale sits at the patio table watching birds play in their fountain. He pulls a glass of lemonade from the universe. Crowley's red hair is shining bright in the late morning sun and a sheen of sweat is gathering on his brow. Aziraphale summons another glass. There’s no hurry.

Crowley stands behind him as he opens the envelope, a hand on his shoulder. Aziraphale covers it with his own, briefly.

_Adam Young and Eva Gammel cordially invite you to celebrate the birth of their child. The christening will take place at ..._

“A baptism, how lovely.”

Crowley snorts, but it's not as derisive as he thinks it is. He's still all angles and anxiety but his edges aren't as sharp as they used to be. Aziraphale loves him.

“It's an empty ritual, angel. Just a human thing.”

Crowley's baiting him and they both know it. He smiles his most infuriating smile as he conjures a pen and commits; Mr. and Mr. Fell will happily attend, bearing gifts.

That night, with Crowley softly snoring into his side, Aziraphale starts. His eyes open wide and his book falls to the side. A baptism. A human ritual yes, but one imbued with a meaning he hadn’t considered. A bath in cleansing water. Replenishment. Clearing away all but the most important aspects of the soul, cleaning and exposing that which remains.

A bath. Marking rebirth and renewal.

Aziraphale can't help but gasp.

Crowley curls even closer. He burrows his nose into Aziraphale's fleshy side and heaves a sleepy sigh. He doesn't wake.

A silent tear rolls down Aziraphale’s cheek. He hadn't given it much thought — his time in Hell had been so brief and filled with thoughts of Crowley. What would _he_ do, what can _I_ do — he’d been consumed by the role he was playing.

Aziraphale hadn't realized.

He looks down at the demon sleeping beside him. He brushes a strand of long hair back from Crowley's face. He’s snoring a little, and has thrown one arm and a leg over Aziraphale’s body in a protective squeeze. The covers are a hopeless tangle around them and Crowley is impossibly warm. Aziraphale loves him.

He won't tell Crowley of his own baptism. In a bath in Hell, praying for a new life with the one he loves.


End file.
